Preview: Tudor family troubles deepen in The Virgin Trial

Last season, ATP scored a major triumph with its production of Kate Hennig’s The Last Wife, which chronicled the tumultuous pairing of Henry VIII with his sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr.

In Hennig’s sequel, The Virgin Trial, Katherine and Henry are now dead, but his children from previous marriages — Mary from first wife Catherine of Aragon, Elizabeth (Bess) from second wife Anne Boleyn and Edward from third wife Jane Seymour — are very much alive. They about to be embroiled in a reputed assassination attempt on Edward’s life.

Emma Houghton, who plays young Elizabeth, and Helen Knight, who plays the older half-sister Mary, are back in this play. So is Haysam Kadri, who plays Thomas Seymour, Katherine Parr’s lover who married her after Henry’s death.

They are joined by Sarah Orenstein as Eleanor, the lead investigator when Thomas is accused of conspiring with Elizabeth to kill Edward. The cast also includes Nigel Shawn Williams as Thomas’s brother Ted, Jamie Konchak as Elizabeth’s governess Ashley and Conrad Belau as Parry, Elizabeth’s bookkeeper.

“Returning to play Mary is like putting on a favourite coat you had put away for the winter. It feels so comfortable and so right to be getting into her skin again,” says Knight, who won a Betty Award for playing Mary in The Last Wife. “It really is a lovely gift to play Mary under new circumstances. I get to deepen my understanding of her. Her soul gets richer for me.”

Knight says the play advances the relationship between the sisters with Mary now an important ally for Elizabeth.

“Mary promised Katherine Parr she would look out for and care for Elizabeth and she’s determined to fulfil that promise. It’s a complicated relationship because, although Mary and Elizabeth are half-sisters, they are also political players in some high stakes games.”

For Houghton, the thrill of playing Elizabeth (Bess) in The Virgin Trial is that she gets “to see how relationships that were hinted at in The Last Wife get to play out and be more fully explored. It’s especially exciting to explore what the relationship between Bess and Thomas was back then in The Last Wife and is now in The Virgin Trial.

She stresses that, like The First Wife, The Virgin Trial tells this part of Elizabeth’s life in modern dress and modern dialogue, but also with old, courtly rules.

“In The Last Wife, Bess was a supporting character but this time the play focuses on her. It’s Bess’s coming of age story. I really hope teenagers will come out to see The Virgin Trial. They’ll identify with Bess. She’s an incredibly smart young teenager struggling with delusions of grandeur, shame, guilt and love.

“The Virgin Trial is like watching a piece of coal being turned into a diamond.”

Both Houghton and Knight feel they are living a dream as they were both huge fans of these characters even before they were teenagers themselves. Knight recalls seeing the movie Lady Jane at age 10 with Helena Bonham Carter as the rebellious Lady Jane Grey, cousin to Henry VIII.

“I fell instantly in love with all things about the Tudors and all their intrigues and wanted to learn everything I could about them,” says Knight.

When Houghton was also 10 when her parents gave her a set of books called The Young Royals.

“I’ve always been a voracious reader and my parents fed that passion. When I was in Grade 6, I wrote a book report on Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl. My teacher gave me an A but asked if my parents knew I was reading such adult-themed literature. I told her it was my mother who gave me the book.”

Houghton and Knight are hoping The Virgin Trial will appeal to both teens and adults and she assures prospective audiences that “The Virgin Trial is very much a stand-alone piece of theatre. It is an amazing drama.

“It will help for the first 10 minutes maybe to have seen The Last Wife to know who these characters are, but once the story begins to unfold, everyone in the audience will be on the same ground.”

Directed by Glynis Leyshon and designed for ATP by Scott Reid, Heather Moore and David Fraser, The Virgin Trial runs in the Arts Common’s Martha Cohen in a thrust stage configuration from Sept. 11 to 29.

Check out atplive for more information on the play and the venue, and to purchase advance tickets.

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